


And Arya Stark Chose to Live

by Purple_Slippers_18



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arya-centric, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Kissing, Post-Season/Series 08 AU, Post-Season/Series 08 Finale, Pregnancy, Slow Build, Storm's End (ASoIaF)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-03-09 08:08:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18912955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Purple_Slippers_18/pseuds/Purple_Slippers_18
Summary: Arya Stark, who had closed so many eyes, had done something death never could…she created life.





	1. Along the Kingsroad

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all!
> 
> So, that GoT ending...yeah, it sure happened...
> 
> Like many others, this series ending was not my favourite, but hey, when a series throws you an unsatisfying finale, make fanfiction, am I right!
> 
> This is my first foray into GoT fiction, though I have been writing for different fandoms for years. I was really invested in the Gendrya relationship and I refuse to believe that they will not be together. So, I tweaked a few things here and there and I've made my own story of what I think happens to these two crazy kids after the sacking of King's Landing.
> 
> Enjoy!

The bile burned her throat as she felt the vomit push up from her belly and over her tongue, wet chunks of half chewed meat and turnip splashing on the forest floor and along her boots. Arya felt dizzy as she tried to catch her breath, but before she could another wave of nausea took over and she was bent over again, fingers digging into the bark of a tree so that she kept her balance as she retched so hard her eyes burned and head pounded.

It was several minutes before the sickness finally passed. Arya remained bent over, spitting into the dirt a few times as she breathed deep and tried to get her head to stop spinning.

That was the sixth time she’d been ill in almost a week.

It was annoying, and Arya was mortified at her body’s behaviour. She’d had a queasy stomach since the moment she’d refused Gendry’s proposal nearly a moon ago. It had been true agony to hurt him by saying ‘no’ to his pretty words, but it had been right to refuse him. Better they live with the sharp but temporary sting of hurt now rather than marry and let the years draw out a raw and bitter hate within their hearts as they tried to be people they weren’t. That would be the more painful conclusion to their affair.

Still, it had surprised Arya how much she was troubled at leaving Gendry. Even more than leaving her sister and brothers, leaving the blacksmith behind in Winterfell is what played most upsettingly on the young woman’s mind. Her stomach had been in knots the second he’d left her to her lonely personal celebration after his failed proposal, and for the rest of the evening Arya had been unable to shoot her arrows perfectly, always a little off centre.

That bothered her.

It hadn’t bothered her enough to not leave at first light the following morning, but the churning cyclone of discomfort remained low in her belly, traveling up to squeeze around her heart and burn her lungs and put a horrible, pounding pressure at the back of her head. It was good the Hound was not much for talking, and she had outgrown the need to ramble that had so annoyed him when they’d travelled together years before. In fact, the great grouchy man had commented a few times at her somber silence over their journey down the Kingsroad. It was almost as if he missed her constant nattering, but Arya knew that couldn’t be so, because the Hound was not a sentimental soldier.

He was a tool of death, just like her.

Wiping the lingering spittle from her lips on the back of her hand, Arya straightened herself up, stretched her spine, and made her way back to the fire.

The Hound was still up, his giant lumpy figure darker than even the night that surrounded them. He kept the fire stoked and had thrown a skein of water on her bedroll. She didn’t look at him as she drank from it, washing the sour remains of the vomit from her tongue.

“If you’re getting sick, girl, I’ll leave you here and go on to King’s Landing without you,” he grunted.

“Not sick,” she replied.

“You’ve gagged every meal for a week. You’re slowing me down.”

“Then go on without me. I don’t need an escort, especially a miserable old shit of an escort like you.”

She threw the skein back at him, not bothering to see if he would catch it. She laid down on her furs, tucking Needle to her side and the dagger that had slain the Night King under her pillow. With the tensions between the two queens rattling the land like an earthquake, there were more looters and rapers and murderers to contend with than there had been even during the War of the Five Kings and it was better to have a weapon close by.

Arya lay on her back, staring at the stars. She rested a hand on her still unsettled stomach, rubbing at it to try and soothe the storm that brewed within. She could feel the Hound watching her, the little hairs on the back of her neck standing on end.

“What?”

“Did that smith ever find you?”

“Who?”

“Don’t play coy with me, bitch,” the Hound barked, his biting tone not enough to startle her, but she did grace him with a disdainful glower of her own.

“His name is Gendry.”

“Don’t care about the cunt’s name. Did he find you?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm.”

“Why do you want to know? Why do you even care?” Arya asked. It irritated her that the Hound was asking about Gendry. She didn’t want to talk about him, not when the thought of his name made her heart pinch. And she certainly didn’t want to talk about him with the Hound.

“Seemed he wanted you.”

“Don’t know why you care what he wanted.”

“Did you want him?”

Growling as if she truly was a direwolf, Arya sprung up from where she lay and turned on the Hound, lips pulled up in a snarl, teeth gnashing together as grey eyes reflected the firelight like storm clouds cradle lightning.

“Would it surprise you if I said I’d had him?! Is that what you want to know?! That I fucked him! Because I did. Before the dead came and after they were gone, I had him.”

“Not after the fucker became a little lordling, then?” the Hound asked.

“No, not after that.”

“He went looking for you. Thought he wanted to fuck you then, the stupid shit.”

“Well he didn’t fuck me. He did something stupider,” she groused, remembering Gendry’s face, how he’d smiled as he told her he was the new Lord Baratheon, how he called her beautiful and said things that almost made her forget her list of names.

“Don’t know what could be stupider than fucking the she-wolf of Winterfell right under her brother’s nose,” the Hound grumbled right back. “Bloody twat couldn’t keep it in his trousers.”

“Don’t call him that,” she said, moving back to lay down, only she turned on her side and gave the Hound her back.

The Hound snorted.

“Never thought I’d see you in love, wolf-bitch.”

“I’m not,” Arya said, and she believed it when she spoke, no matter how her mind conjured visions of Gendry when she heard the word ‘love’.

If she closed her eyes this moment she could see him, laying on the sacks of grain, looking up at her as if she were the most amazing thing he had ever beheld. She remembered how his hands felt on her body, holding her hips, caressing her thighs. They were big hands with calloused fingers, but they were gentle and firm at the same time, guiding her as she rode him. It was the way he looked at her as much as it was his fingers that toyed with the pebble of her pleasure, that had her filling up with her very own dragon fire, the heat burning her inside out from the tips of her toes to the ends of her hair. And as the flames had receded and her with them, she could still feel Gendry’s mouth on her shoulder, his teeth nipping her skin as he’d pumped into her towards his own completion…

Her stomach rolled again and Arya had to get up fast, racing past the Hound and back into the brush to empty out whatever slick bile was still left in her belly.

The Hound watched her go with a critical eye, shaking his head.

“Stupid girl.”


	2. Thank You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Going into the Red Keep meant nothing but death, but when that is all Arya has known for so long, what else could there possibly be?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you one and all for leaving your kudos and comments and bookmarks on this story. I hope the next chapter is to your liking!

She was sick again when they released the horses a few leagues outside of the capital’s walls. 

“For fuck’s sake, girl!” the Hound roared as he watched her choke and gasp against a boulder. “Leave.”

“No,” Arya insisted, forcing her stomach to cease its rolling turmoil. “I’m going to finish my list. I’m going to kill Cersei.”

“And after?” the Hound asked.

“There is no after,” she said, knowing the Hound would understand her meaning. She wouldn’t return from this final assassination. When her list was done her purpose would be complete and there would be no reason for Arya Stark to continue. And whether that would mean she would die or she would transform into No One and disappear into the world’s chaos as a servant of the Many-Faced-God didn’t matter. All that mattered was completing the list.

She made herself straighten up. Taking a few long deep breaths, she focused herself on her goal and started walking towards the city with the Hound cursing behind her. 

They didn’t speak as they approached the Dragon’s Gate and became two more faces in the panicked crowds of civilians that were scurrying desperately to find sanctuary from the invading army. They’d seen the Dragon Queen’s troops as they’d approached the city and now that they were almost inside they could see the Lannister soldiers and Kingsguard marching to their posts. There was a chaos to the crowds, people darting back and forth, ferrying children and carrying their few possessions in sacks to wherever they hoped would be safe during the battle. 

Arya and the Hound pushed their way through the people, slipping in-between the gates before they were barricaded. She could hear the wails of the people trapped on the other side, banging on the doors and begging the guards for entrance. The sounds of the people gave Arya chills, and there was something else, just a feeling she had, something in the way the air moved and smelled.

Something very bad was going to happen to King’s Landing.

Having to move briskly, Arya and the Hound pushed forward towards the Red Keep, only stopping when the thunderclap of dragon wings crashed over the city and the roar of Drogon’s fire left the ground under their feet shaking. 

The battle had begun. 

Along with many in the crowd, Arya and the Hound rushed towards the Red Keep. She never looked up, but she heard Drogon rip the kingdom’s defenses away, circling the walls and blasting fire down on the battlements. 

It wasn’t long into the siege that the bells clanged their defeat and the dragon fire finally stopped. The citizens that surrounded Arya and the Hound stood still, looking up to the sky and seeing the black dragon perched atop the King’s Gate. They looked at their conqueror, the Targaryen Queen, and she looked back at them, and whatever she saw she found lacking.

After training to harvest the faces of the dead and wear them to become No One, Arya had thought nothing else would ever truly surprise her. When Queen Daenerys unleashed her rage on the city, commanding her black dragon to fly over the battlements and start raining fire down on the people of King’s Landing, Arya found that there were some things that could still surprise her, and those things were truly terrifying to behold. 

Her heart leaped into her throat when the shadow of the dragon darkened the street she and the Hound were on, but it passed them by and made for their shared destination: the Red Keep.

Neither Arya nor the Hound faltered in their race to the castle. They pushed past panicked people and looting guards and fighting soldiers and ran down the main street that split King’s Landing in half, making their way ever closer to the castle and their revenge. By the time they reached the Red Keep it was already a ruin, but that did not stop Arya from ascending the steps and fearlessly pushing ahead. The Hound was faltering some, his eyes trained on the sky as Drogon circled around the castle again, his fire burning down another tower and sending red stone raining down to the street below. 

They emerged onto a painted courtyard, a map of Westeros cracked and caked with dust under their feet. The whole side of the tower ahead of them was gone, and through the arches at the very top both spotted three figures begin the dangerous decent, and one was most certainly the blond head of Queen Cersei. When Arya spotted the viscous monarch she was thirsty to kill, she smiled and started for the steps to the tower. 

“Wait,” the Hound said, and Arya did, stopping in her tracks to look up at the man beside her.

“What is it?”

For a moment the Hound never answered, his eyes trained above them, looking at Cersei, his brother, the sky that had gone grey with ash and the black dragon that continued to swirl around the very castle they were storming. 

“Go home, little wolf,” he growled. “Go back to your smith.” Arya was so shocked by his words that she scoffed in his face. “The fire will get her, or one of the Dothraki, or maybe that dragon will eat her, but Cersei is dead and you’ll be too if you stay.”

“I’m not leaving. I’m going to kill her, not some bloody dragon.”

She tried to brush past him, but the Hound reached out and grabbed her arm, pulling her hard to make her face him. 

“Listen to me! You come with me and you die.”

“I don’t care!” Arya screamed, yanking her arm out of the Hound’s hold. She stepped back from him, a storm of anger swirling in her grey eyes as she looked up at the man that had been both her captor and protector. “If I die it doesn’t matter as long as I take Cersei with me.”

“It does matter, you dumb bitch!” the Hound hollered, reaching out for the wild woman in front of him. Arya moved to clutch Needle’s hilt, ready to strike the man if he attempted to grab her again. She gasped sharply when he did not pull at her as she had anticipated, but instead laid a large, heavy hand over her belly. It seemed to burn like a brand.

“No,” she said, shaking her head back and forth, not wanting to believe it, not wanting the Hound to believe it…but then, she had suspected it from the first time she was sick on the road, had wondered if she hadn’t really left all of Gendry Baratheon behind at Winterfell. 

But it was pointless to dwell on such things because to do so meant there was something so much more to lose if she tried to finish her list. It would mean her list would have to be abandoned with Cersei’s name still scrawled at the top, taunting her and her father’s memory. If she didn’t kill Cersei, if she never avenged the greatest wrong ever done to her family, then Arya would be something less than No One. She would be Nothing.

The list was Arya and Arya was the list. She wasn’t Arry, or Cat of the Canals, or a Lady of Winterfell. She was Retribution, whose mission it was to bring justice against the enemies of House Stark. If she wasn’t that, what else was left?

“Arya,” the Hound said so softly it was amazing she heard him as the walls continued to crumble around them. She didn’t flinch when he moved his hand from her belly up to her neck, cupping the back of her head and pulling her close. “Look at me. This is what happens when you serve vengeance, when it’s all that you know and all that you want. The only thing I have in my future is death. But you don’t have to have that, girl. You can choose something else.”

“…what else is there?” she asked raggedly, desperate for something to hold on to as tightly as she had held her list for the past seven years. She felt as if she were a piece of thread pulled taught, straining under the pressure of needing to finish her list, her purpose. If the Hound could give her a new reason, a new truth, she would snap. 

The old dog actually smiled when he gave her neck a squeeze and looked into her eyes with an emotion she swore she had once seen on her father’s face when she would tell him she wanted to sail west of Westeros to see what lay beyond the map’s edge. 

“Life.”

And the string snapped. 

Gasping as if she had been punched in the gut, Arya released her grip on Needle and moved her hand to cup her belly the same way the Hound had. It was still flat, but there was life beneath her palm, she knew it just as all mothers said they knew when their babe took root in their womb. Arya Stark, who had closed so many eyes, had done something death never could…she created life. 

Seeing her understand what she could be, what she could have, the Hound nodded and pet her hair just once before moving away from her and heading for the stairwell. He was glad the girl had chosen what her father would have wanted for her.

“Sandor.”

He paused, surprised she’d called his name. Still, he turned to look at her.

Arya Stark stood in the middle of the crumbling hall, no bigger than she had been when she’d robbed him and left him to die on that mountainside years ago. She had changed in other ways from the brat he’d known and now she’d changed again right before his eyes. 

She wasn’t Death incarnate any longer. 

She was a mother. 

“Thank you.”

Had his heart not calcified years ago, the Hound thought it might have lurched at her last words to him. As it was, he had chosen death over life a long time ago; so long ago that he knew nothing else. There was no saving him.

He did not cry, or smile, or even nod at the girl. 

Without a word, he turned away from her, hoping she would survive the siege to see her smith once again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Chapter: Just because Arya finally chose life doesn't mean that death isn't going to make her fight for it.


	3. Not Today

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We know what we say to the God of Death, but what does the God of Death say to us?

 “Take my hand!”

Arya groped blindly for the arm that belonged to the voice of her sole deliverer. Fingers closed around a slim wrist and Arya was helped back to her feet by a slight woman with short shorn hair and a very young child bound to her chest with a long scarf.

She’d been trying to avoid falling debris when the mob had overwhelmed her and she’d tripped to the cobbled road. Though she’d tried to get up, the sea of people crashing over her in wave after wave had made it impossible to stand. All she could do was curl in on herself, knees tucked up under her so that her belly might have some protection. When the hand and the voice had called out to her it had felt like a miracle.

Now back on her feet, Arya wanted to thank the woman, but before she could the shadow of the dragon fell over them again and the people around her screamed in terror. They began to move in all directions, and like a boat caught in the tide, Arya was ripped away from the woman and child and dragged down a road she did not want to go. All she could do was run with them.

It was hard not to lose her footing again, but Arya pushed forward, one arm crossed over her belly as a small means of protection; the only protection she could give it, really. When others behind her tried to grab at her shoulders or pull her hair or push her aside, she shrugged them off with a fierce battle cry and kept running.

She didn’t want to die.

She wanted to live.

She wanted to see her family, Sansa and Bran and Jon and the people of the North.

She wanted to see Gendry again, hold him, kiss him, love him all over his stupid new castle twice over.

She wanted to see the look on his face when she told him she was having his child.

She wanted to see that child.

Drogon screeched again, the beast’s dark wings beating down a gale over the city so strong that it lifted Arya into the air. She cried out as her feet left the ground and her body flipped on the tide of the wind. As she came crashing down, Arya did her best to protect her belly, shifting so that her side might take the brunt of the hard landing on the steps of what she thought was a library. Her shoulder popped when it made impact with the stone, but she did not suffer the pain for long.

Her head snapped back and cracked against a rock so hard that she saw stars for only a moment before a darkness as black as the dragon’s shadow took her, and then she knew nothing.

**~*~**

The air she sucked in burned her throat as she gasped awake.

Her whole body spasmed as if she were having a fit as she opened her eyes and coughed the embers out of her throat, flipping on to her side spit to choke out the smoke and dust that ravaged her lungs. She could feel the blood still oozing from another wound at her temple, lost in the dark matted mess of her hair, and she reached between her legs to check if there was blood there.

None.

Fat tears escaped her eyes to mingle with the blood on her face, leaving the taste of salt and iron on her tongue as Arya forced herself to her feet.

The babe was still with her. She still had a chance to save them both.

Staggering down what she thought was a road, Arya tried to get her bearings. Everything was caked in dust and ash. The air was nigh unbreathable, and she had to stop to vomit grey muck out of her body. She walked past so many people, many dead, many more burned, their skin curled back in black ribbons to expose the meaty muscle beneath.

She needed to get out.

Looking for a landmark that might tell her where she was, Arya found herself at the base of one of the bell towers. She leaned against it, just needing a minute to catch her breath, but when she felt the stone crack under her palm, Arya knew that the gods did not intend for her struggle to live through the sacking of King’s Landing to be any easier than all of the other days of her life since she first left this cursed city seven years ago.

Seeing the crack grow and deepen, Arya knew the tower would not stand for long. Pushing herself away and ignoring the ache in her shoulder, head and lungs, the young woman ran as fast as she could from the structure, hearing it groan and crumble behind her until the bell let out its final death toll as the whole thing came crashing down. She managed to duck around a building, the stone wall at her back offering some shelter from the raining rubble.

Closing her eyes, Arya tried to clear her mind, but all she could hear was the screams of the people around her and the tempest made by Drogon’s black wings. There was no time to think, only to run. Opening her eyes, Arya intended to continue her dash out of the city when she caught sight of a familiar face.

The woman who had helped her was still alive, and so was her child it seemed, crying like a demon against its mother’s neck as the woman moved to take shelter in a covered stairwell beside a brothel.

Arya had to try and help them, just as they had helped her.

She walked up to them quickly, noticing for the first time the dozen or so others who were also cowering in the area, heads ducked low and arms thrown over them to protect them from falling debris. Many did turn to her when she approached, but they did not speak or move. Coming to stand before the mother and her babe, Arya crouched low and placed her hands on the woman’s shoulders.

“You’re going to die if you stay here,” she rasped with her usual bluntness.  

“We’ll die if we go out there!” someone in the group shouted.

The ricochet of the dragon’s roar ripped through the street and everyone shivered in fear at the beast’s return. Rather than cower, the sound of the approaching dragon made Arya rage with a fire of her own.

She was going to live and she was going to try and save as many people as she could.

“You’ll die if you stay here! Come with me,” she ordered the woman, hefting her up and pulling her by the arm out of the stairwell. “All of you follow me!”

She noticed some did get up at her command, but then some didn’t. She couldn’t do anything for them, but she could try and do something for those that trusted her enough to follow. Peeking around the edge of the archway that led to the street, Arya pulled the woman and her child out. The woman was scared, holding her babe’s face tight to her breast as she swivelled her head back and forth so much Arya thought she might break her neck.

“Come this way,” she insisted, picking a direction and starting down it. She thought she could see the city’s wall through the fog of dust, could almost make out the breech that Drogon had ripped through the stone and mortar when this had been a true battle and not a razing. It was a relief to see they were so close to freedom.

Then the ground beneath their feet shook and the others who had followed them scattered like pieces of scroll torn and tossed in the wind. Dothraki riders came up from behind them, their war cries sending a tremor of dread down Arya’s spine perhaps with even more ferocity than Drogon’s roar.

“Run!” she shouted at the woman, pulling her along the street, keeping her eyes focused on the path ahead, on the broken wall that would see her and this woman and child to safety.

Arya didn’t know how they lost their grip on one another. One moment the woman’s arm was in her hands and the next it was gone. She watched, helpless, as the woman was run down by one of the Dothraki, the warrior’s arakh swinging down on her with great force. Arya was thrown to the ground was well, barely avoiding having her head shaved off her neck by another of the Dothraki horde. She looked for the woman and spotted her crouched in the dirt. Going to her, Arya was prepared to carry the pair out of the city if she had to, but then she saw the woman’s back and knew this life she’d tried so hard to save belonged to the Many-Faced-God now.

The woman’s back and been sliced vertical, her spine popping out of the wound and oozing pink and red over her dress.

“Take him,” the woman begged, unable to move naught but her head as she gestured towards her squalling child. Despite her broken body and the fear of knowing death was coming close, the woman smiled as if the world around her wasn’t falling apart when Arya scooped the toddler into her arms. “Thank you.”

Arya wanted to assure the woman that her son would live, that she would make sure he was never hungry or cold and that he would know that his mother’s last act towards him was out of love. She wanted to tell the woman all of these things to ease her descent into death’s hands, but then the dragon’s roar came again.

Looking up, Arya saw the creature swooping down upon them and she turned and ran with the squirming bundle in her arms. She heard the woman’s scream of agony and fear as Drogon came closer, the hellfire of his flames licking at the street and rushing forwards like a tidal wave.

She wasn’t going to make it.

She couldn’t outrun the fire.

Swerving away to find protection behind another crumbling building, Arya dove to the ground, her arms wrapped tightly around the small boy she held to her chest. She pressed the whole front of her body to the building, trying to make herself as small as possible. She felt the dragon’s fire heat her feet and singe her hair and before she shut her eyes tight she prayed that if the Many-Faced-God wanted her today that he make it quick.

And she prayed to her father’s gods, the Old Ones, that her family…Gendry…that they all would find a way to forgive her for leaving them without a word to come to this wretched city and die. She hoped they might understand that in the end, she had wanted to live.

But none of the god’s answered her prayers.

There was no quick death, no family to grieve her.

Not today.

It grew quiet. So quiet, that the silence was louder than Drogon’s roar. When Arya opened her eyes, the world was just as dark as if she’d kept them closed. Slowly, she sat up, her body protesting even the slightest movement. The baby in her arms was shivering and he appeared to be crying, though Arya couldn’t hear his wails.

Moving as if she were a puppet, her body out of her control, Arya cupped the boy’s head and held him close. She kissed his sweat wet brow and rubbed her hand along his back, trying to comfort him, but he continued to cry. Heaving a long, shaky breath, Arya pushed herself up along the wall until she was standing on her own two feet.

The ash fell all around her like snow, catching in her eyelashes and making her skin itch. She moved out on to the street, looking back and forth over the devastation.

It was like walking through something that was both dream and nightmare.

Bodies lay everywhere like a child’s discarded dolls. Some where burnt, and some were crushed, and some were still twitching with the last spark of life before stilling under the rubble. As her grey eyes scanned the destruction, she spotted the charcoal mummy of the woman she had been so desperate to help. Approaching the body, Arya finally began to hear the babe’s crying.

It was far away at first, like the sound of the ocean in a shell, but each step that brought her closer to his mother raised the volume of the wailing until the broken, frightened cries of the boy were all that was ringing in her ears.

He was alive.

She was alive.

Bringing one hand down to her belly and pressing on it, Arya felt no pain and knew that her own babe was alive.

It seemed that it had been Death who had said ‘not today’ to this small pack.

Not today for one mother, but today for another.

Arya had to get the boy out of the city. She had to save him, just as his mother had wanted.

Seeking a scrap of cloth among the burning ruins, Arya made quick work of binding the boy to her back. When he pulled on her singed hair and screamed in her ear she didn’t mind. He was alive and so was she and they were leaving this hell hole.

Seeing the breech in the city walls through the fog of dust and ash, Arya started walking, each step taking her farther away from the god she had worshiped for so long, and towards a new horizon with unknown territory to chart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again and again to all that have been reading and kudos-ing, bookmarking, and commenting. You are the fuel to my fire.
> 
> Next Chapter: Escaping King's Landing was only the first step to embracing life.


	4. The List

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She couldn't sleep without her list, and now that she was reborn in the fire and ash of King's Landing, perhaps it was time that the list be reborn, too.

There were other survivors making their way away from the sacked capital. Most were injured, the fear of what lay in wait for them in King’s Landing outweighing the pain of their burns and cuts and broken bones. 

Arya walked among them, one hand always on Needle’s hilt lest someone try to harm her or the boy who had finally fallen asleep after hours of crying. Arya wanted so badly to rest, but she knew the moment she stopped she would not be able to make her body continue going, and she still did not feel safe. King’s Landing still felt too close; she could smell Drogon’s breath from the smoke in her clothing and had been coughing up black bile that burned her lungs like dragon’s fire as she heaved the poison out of her body. 

So she kept walking.

It was hard to say if it was night or day when Arya and the others finally stopped their exile. The dust from the destruction of King’s Landing had created a veil of powder that blocked the light from the sun and moon and stretched for leagues beyond the city. A few tents had already been erected in the clearing where she found herself, some even had house sigils adorning the fabric, and small fires started to sprout around her as people set up camp and took stock of what had happened.

All Arya wanted to do was get clean.

She followed a group that were headed for a nearby pond to collect water for boiling the bandages as the triage for the wounded would at last begin. Arya didn’t care. She only wanted to wash the death off her body. 

Gathering at the pond’s edge, the young woman made quick work of lowering the boy from her back and stripping him of his clothes. Seemingly cried out, the toddler stood on fat wobbly legs and let her undress him without complaint, only gasping in discomfort when, after disrobing herself, Arya plunged them both into the chilly waters. Others around her did the same, men, women, children, all got naked and dove into the pond, the cool water promising to wash the memories of the razed city from their minds just as it washed the ash and blood from their bodies. 

Awkwardly, Arya moved the boy in her arms so that she might clean him. He squirmed as she cupped water in her palm and rubbed it along his face, washing away the soot and tears to reveal pink cheeks, tawny brown hair, a little mouth with four baby teeth, and eyes as hazel as the land that surrounded them. It was difficult and slow to wash the babe. Not only was her left shoulder hurting her terribly, but Arya could not recall ever holding a child so small before, her arms clumsy in their embrace as the boy almost slipped out of her grasp several times during their bath. 

Frustrated, Arya decided the best way to clean the boy would be to dunk him under the water. Covering his nose and mouth with her hand, she took a deep breath and plunged them both into the water. It was cool and dark and safe beneath the surface and it would have been peaceful to just stay there until the world went away around her. But Arya Stark had decided to live and so she breached the water’s surface and took a painful gulp of air, her lungs burning this time as fresh oxygen filled them. The boy in her arms began to cry again, but Arya encouraged the keening because it meant he was alive. This boy still lived while his mother did not, and Arya would make sure the lad continued to live to see tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. 

She promised her own babe the same. 

Lifting them both out of the pond, Arya used her tunic to dry the boy off before dressing him.

“I’m sorry,” she said, hoping he might understand the many things she was sorry for. “I don’t know your name,” she realized, pushing back his wet hair. 

The toddler could not yet speak and so his name would be a truth forever denied to him. But Arya knew all about names. She knew how they could make you, change you, kill you and rebirth you anew. A name was precious, for when everyone finally met the Many-Faced-God, all they would take with them and all they would leave behind was their name. 

And there was someone who had left their name behind today, left it in Arya’s care where it could either become a memory or it could live on alongside her.

“I name you Sandor,” she whispered to the boy, “and I claim you for House Stark.”

The boy hiccoughed at his baptism, too tired and scared and hungry to deny the new mantel bestowed on him. Cupping the back of his head so that she could press their brows together, Arya liked to imagine that she could hear a hound howling in the distance. 

The pack survives.

Finding the last drops of her strength, Arya lifted the boy and rested him against her good shoulder before making her way back to the camp. 

There were more people now, more fires and more tents. Arya scanned around her, heart lurching when she spotted a small shelter with the direwolf sigil on the front. Approaching the tent, she did not bother to announce herself when she pulled back the flap and stepped inside. 

Three Stark soldiers were within. Two were passed out on pallets, both injured, with one sporting a face half covered in gauze to protect the burn that surely was blistering underneath while the other was stripped from the waist down and was having a gash in his side being stitched together by a woman dressed as a septa. The one soldier who was still on his feet turned to her, his lips curled back as if to tell her to leave, but his eyes widened in recognition when they saw her face and all that escaped his open mouth was a puff of air.

“You know me?” she asked.

“Yes, m’lady.”

It stung to hear the title and Arya reflexively placed her free hand against her belly. 

“May we stay?”

The soldier nodded and raised his arm towards the third pallet in the tent, ushering her to rest. 

“I didn’t know you were with the troops,” he said, handing her a blanket as she settled herself and Sandor.

“I wasn’t,” she replied. “No one knew I was coming here.”

“Ah…let me fetch you and the young one some food.”

She didn’t know how long the soldier was gone, only that it seemed she had shut her eyes as he left and when she opened them again he was crouched before her slicing bits of apple for Sandor to chew. When he noticed her eyes on him, the man lowered his head in shame.

“Forgive me, Lady Stark –”

“It’s just Arya,” she interrupted, not caring for the way the man flinched at her snappish tone.

“…Arya, then,” he conceded, his voice broken with a sob that he barely managed to rein in. When Arya did not speak, he finally looked up at her, blue eyes awash with fresh tears in a face covered in soot. “We are deserters. The Dragon Queen…when she…it was as if all Seven Hells were raining down on us and we did not stay. We abandoned your brother. We turned away from Winterfell.”

“If you three are traitors for running away then I am one of you,” Arya said, holding the Stark soldier’s gaze tightly with her own. She looked into the man’s eyes, let him look back at hers so he might see her own fear, the memory of the dragon fire and the toppling of towers and the death that burned all around them. She wanted him to know she was his comrade in the struggle to live through the horror of this day.

“Take my bed, La—Arya,” he finally said, eyes shying away from her. “I think I might never sleep again.”

He left her and the injured men and septa in the tent. Arya wanted to go after him, but her body had finally been defeated. The ache in her bones was impossible to fight and the weight of Sandor who had fallen asleep at her breast left her helpless to move in any direction but down. 

Arya lay on her back, moving Sandor to nuzzle at her side, his little breaths sometimes broken by a tiny cough. She closed her eyes, begging for sleep to take her, but it never came. 

She had no names to say, no list to recite to lull her to rest. 

Her stomach heaved then, and Arya rubbed a hand over it. She wasn’t sure if it was too soon to feel the baby quickening inside her, but inside her it was, still alive, still growing. It would need a name when it was born. 

“Jon,” Arya whispered, thinking of her older brother still lost in the ruins of King’s Landing. “Sansa. Bran.” The whole of her family that was left after years of being hunted and slaughtered. “Winterfell.” Her home, the beacon that had been lighting her path, the one place that not even the Faceless Men could make her forget. “…Gendry.” She wanted to see him again so badly. “Sandor.” She nuzzled the soft hair of the baby boy at her side, remembering him and the man she’d named him after. “The baby.” And again her hand squeezed over her belly as if the growing babe might somehow feel her touch. 

She repeated the names again. 

Jon. Sansa. Bran. Winterfell. Gendry. Sandor. The Baby.

Arya said them again and again, whispered them against the shell of Sandor’s ear until she felt herself start to fade into sleep.

She had a new list now. 

Names of the people and places she wanted to see again. 

Names of those who she loved. 

Names of all the reasons she wanted to live another day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all!
> 
> Once again, thank you so much for your support. I hope this chapter finds you well, that you found it well, and that all is well!
> 
> Cheers!
> 
> Next Chapter: When word reaches the refugee camp that the Dragon Queen is dead, it's time for Arya to make a decision: does she go north or south?


	5. South

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's time for Arya Stark to go home.

“The tea will help with your sickness,” Septa Hollis said, urging Arya to drink the foul-smelling liquid, all the while never taking her eyes away from the stitches she was dabbing with salve. She’d had to cut Arya’s hair to get at the head-wound properly when she’d first stitched it the morning after the sacking of King’s Landing. The brown tresses weren’t as short as they had been when she was Arry, but they weren’t so long that she'd be able to tie her hair back for some time.

  
“I’m not sick,” Arya argued.

  
“And I’m not blind,” the septa replied. “I’ve watched you bring up every meal you’ve eaten these last three days and I see the way you clutch your belly. I know a pupped wolf when I see one.”

  
Arya rolled her eyes at the woman’s acute observation, wishing she could make a rude gesture at her. As it was, her left arm was in a sling, a necessary binding to help heal her shoulder which had had to be popped back into place, and her right arm was reaching for the cup of tea, bringing it up to her lips so she could choke the concoction back. It was with a sigh of great disgruntlement when the tincture seemed to work almost immediately, settling her belly’s rolling waves into calm waters.

  
“I’ve put more herbs for your belly in here,” Septa Hollis continued as she placed the jar of healing salve into the satchel she had put together for Arya the day before. “Three pinches in a cup will do it, and you should drink it before you eat and any time you feel queasy thereafter. I’ve given you enough to get to Winterfell, my lady.”

  
“I told you, I’m not going to Winterfell,” Arya said as she hefted the satchel of supplies into her lap and closed up the bag. 

“With all due respect, my lady –”

  
“I’m not your lady,” Arya snapped

  
“With respect,” the septa started again, “in your condition you should go home.”

  
‘ _I will be_ ,’ Arya thought, though she did not say the words aloud to the judgmental woman who, for all her unsolicited advice, had been kind to Arya and Sandor these last few days.

  
The encampment had grown thrice in size since the first night, more people pouring out of King’s Landing and seeking refuge from their ruined city. Many were injured and many more did not live to see another sunrise once they’d made it to the camp. The Stark soldier with the gash in his side had died of fever only a few hours after the septa had stitched him up. As for the soldier who had given up his bed to her that first night, he’d been found hanging from a tree a few yards away from the camp, seemingly by his own hand. Arya had ordered the man cut down and laid out properly, his body washed and covered in cloth bearing the direwolf sigil, with instructions that he was to be returned to Winterfell along with his fallen comrade where they would receive the North’s funeral rites.

  
She wished she could go with them, but she had a different path to travel.

  
“Ta!”

  
“Ow! Sandor!” Arya scolded the boy as he struck her with the twig he had found. He laughed as he swiped at her again, but Arya caught the flimsy stick and snapped it in two, throwing it into a corner. Huffing that his toy had been broken, Sandor plopped himself on the ground at her feet and pouted.

  
“You should wait for a wheelhouse if you’re still planning to take the young one with you,” the septa said.

  
“We don’t need a wheelhouse,” Arya argued, feeling as if she was back at Winterfell with Septa Mordane criticizing everything from her needlework to her hair to her dress to the way she sat slouched at the table. “Sandor and I will be just fine on horseback, right Sandor?”

  
The baby responded by scrunching up his face, grunting wetly, and filling the air with the stench of shit. Realizing the child had soiled himself, Arya huffed and looked to Septa Hollis for help, cursing when the older woman shrugged.

  
“You’ll have to learn sometime,” she said, and Arya rolled her eyes as she hefted the boy into her arms and laid him on the pallet. The brat had the nerve to laugh at her as she undressed him to get to the soiled nappy, the stench putrid and the muck all wet clumps over his little bum and thighs. If Arya believed in ghosts she would have sworn that the Hound was leaning over her shoulder and laughing as the wolf-bitch of Winterfell held her breath and struggled to change a dirty baby.

  
She’d rather slit a throat any day.

  
It took too long for Arya’s liking to get the wet fabric off the boy. She folded it over and used the clean side to wipe away the shit on his skin before tossing the ruined nappy in a bucket. Fishing out a fresh nappy from her satchel, Arya struggled to get the linen on Sandor’s behind. Besides the task being made all the more difficult with her bad shoulder, the baby didn’t want to cooperate either, kicking at her and trying to roll off the pallet, giggling all the while. And the whole time, Arya cursed and grumbled and had to stop herself from pinching the boy more than once to get him to stay put. Still, she managed eventually to get the nappy on, tying the sides up and leaning back in satisfaction. The septa came up behind her to appraise the work.

  
“Very good, my lady, but you have it on backwards.”

  
“Get out!” Arya snapped, pleased when the septa did just that and left the tent. One of the better perks of being a Lady was that others did tend to do as you say. “But not you, little Sandor,” she remarked to the child who was rolling off the pallet again. With a steadying hand on his back, Arya let Sandor do as he wished, and when he was on his feet he toddled away to examine some stones that had captured his interest.

  
Patting her belly as she watched Sandor play, Arya hoped she was ready for the journey ahead of them.

  
The news of the Dragon Queen’s death had reached the camp with the last group of refugees the night before. How she died no one could say for sure, with rumours saying that it had been the Imp, or her lover, or one of her Dothraki riders. What people were certain of was that she was dead and her black dragon had taken her body back across the Narrow Sea.

  
There was no iron throne.

  
There was no ruler of the realm.

  
There was only ash and a broken people and a world laboring to be reborn.

  
For a moment, Arya thought about changing her plan, thought she might take Sandor and find a ship and sail to whatever was west of Westeros and birth her babe in new lands untouched by dragons and queens and wolves…but the thought was fleeting.

  
While she knew she could do without dragons and queens, wolves would never leave Arya. They were a part of her family, her house, her blood. No matter where in the world she went Arya would bring her wolf’s blood with her and that blood would always burn for her home, her family…her mate. So her path was not over uncharted waters, but rather south down the Kingsroad, and she was eager to get her journey started.

  
Picking up her satchel, Arya called for Sandor to follow her, not concerned to watch if he did or not; the babe would not let her out of his sight for long and she trusted he would take chase. They marched through the encampment, making their way to the edge where a Stark soldier stood securing packs to a white horse.

“Thank you, Rikkard,” she said.

  
“M’lady,” he replied, able to bob his head only slightly else the burn healing along his neck would become agitated.

“I told you I’ll not answer you if you call me that,” she grumbled, irked when the blond man just smiled.

  
“If it pleases Arya Stark, then, I would like to go with you.”

  
Arya’s brow crinkled, confused by the request.

  
“Help me with Sandor,” she said first, dropping her satchel and holding out a long, wide strip of cloth to the soldier. Having seen the septa bundle the boy to Arya’s back a few times over the last days, Rikkard did his best to secure the child tightly, mindful of the her injured arm and of the long journey she was about to take. “Why do you want to come with me?” she asked as he adjusted the ties of the scarf. “Why not go back to Winterfell? To your family?”

  
“There’s no one left,” Rikkard said. “Only had my brothers, and they died in the Greyjoy siege some years back. There’s nothing for me to return to.”

  
“And you think there’s something to go towards if you follow me?” Arya asked, moving to mount the steed, slapping Rikkard’s hands away when he tried to help her. Once she settled on the white horse, she regarded the solider, waiting for his answer.

  
“All I know, Arya Stark, is that I’d rather follow you towards something I don’t know than return to something I do. There’s nothing for me back north.”

  
“And there something for you south?”

  
“Dunno. But I’d like to see.”

  
Sighing, Arya knew she was in no mood to argue.

  
“Hurry then. I’m leaving soon.”

  
“Thank you.”

  
She moved the horse slowly towards the Kingsroad. Sandor was bouncing on her back, tugging at her short hair and kicking her sides as if she were the horse. When he leaned forward to bite her ear, she thwacked the top of his head, but the toddler only laughed and did it again.

  
“This is going to be a long journey,” she muttered.

  
“M’lady! M’lady, please!”

  
Stopping as she marched the steed onto the Kingsroad, Arya was surprised when a group of about a dozen smallfolk approached her. They carried sacks of possessions and had a two goats pulling a small cart with young children and food inside. They were dressed as if they intended to travel, and a nervous fluttering began to circle Arya’s stomach, making her wish she could drink Septa Hollis’ horrid tea.

  
“Let us come with you,” a man with a white beard, who had clearly been elected the speaker of the group, said.

  
“Why?” she asked, not sure she wanted the responsibility. It was bad enough she was allowing Rikkard to join her, but at least he was a solider, injured or not, and he could look after himself. This group was nothing but women, children and injured or old men. They were smallfolk who knew naught how to wield a sword or shoot an arrow or fight off raiders, rapers or murderers. They would need her protection on the road, and her protection was already stretched thin to just that of Sandor and her own babe.

  
“Please let us come,” the man pleaded. “There’s nothing in King’s Landing.”

  
She understood their troubles, truly she did. She had seen the world fall in on itself more times than she could count. She had seen her family murdered, her home plundered, her loved ones ripped from her arms. Since the day Ned Stark’s head went rolling down the steps of Baelor, Arya had been moving from one place to the next, looking for that new port that would be her home…where she would be safe. She’d seen so much of the world through her search, and now she was hoping that this next journey would be the last.

  
“I can’t stop you if you want to follow me, but it is up to you to keep up. I will not slow down for you.”

  
“Thank you, m’lady. May the Seven bless you and your young one,” one of the women praised.

  
“You may not be asking the Seven for blessings when you realize you’ll be walking ‘til sundown,” Arya quipped. “And if you continue to call me m’lady I will leave you for the wolves. You may call me Arya Stark if you must to call me something.”

  
“Of course, m’lady,” the man replied absently in his excitement, never noticing the frown Arya shot in his direction. The group did not waste time in tightening their bootstraps and setting out on the first steps of their long journey down the Kingsroad. They’d only just left the encampment when Rikkard caught up to them, his own brown mare keeping an easy pace alongside Arya’s.

  
“So, where do we march?” he asked.

  
Looking at the road ahead, Arya took a long deep breath, imagining she could already smell the saltwater of their destination.

  
“Storm’s End.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to all of you have taken the time to kudos and comment and just read this story. You are all my happy place!
> 
> Next Chapter: They say there's more thieves and murderers than ever in the Kingswood, but none of them expected to run into a wolf.

**Author's Note:**

> Full disclosure, I am a casual GoT fan, of both the show and books. I just really, really, really love Gendrya and I wanted to write about them. I know there will be details that are wrong (is Ilyn Payne dead? Who knows! But he is in this story!), but as long as I can get Arya and Gendry's characters and relationship feeling even a little bit on the mark, then I'll consider this a successful story, and I hope you will, too.


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